The Lady Of Linshui Pacifies Demons

"The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons is a seventeenth-century novelistic account of the founding myth of the cult of the Lady of Linshui, the goddess of women, childbirth, and childhood, who is still venerated in Fujian, Taiwan, and other places in Southeast Asia. The goddess's story evolved from the life of Chen Jinggu in Ming dynasty Hunan and has taken the form of vernacular short fiction, legends, plays, sutras, and stele inscriptions at temples where she is worshipped. This "novel" was translated in consultation with Brigitte Baptandier, whose widely praised anthropological study of the goddess's popularity-The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult-was published originally in French and later in English translation by Stanford University Press in 2008. Among accounts of goddesses in late imperial China, this work is unique in its focus on the physical aspects of womanhood, especially the dangers of childbirth. It is also unique in dramatizing the contradictory nature of divinities in China through narrating the parallel lives of Chen Jinggu and her spirit double/rival, the White Snake demon who is born as her twin, battles with her over the body of her husband, kills her through devouring her fetus, and finally becomes her spirit mount. This unabridged, annotated translation provides insights into late imperial Chinese religion, the lives of women in the period, and, more broadly, the structure of families and local society"--

The Lady of Linshui—the goddess of women, childbirth, and childhood—is still venerated in south China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Her story evolved from the life of Chen Jinggu in the eighth century and blossomed in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) into vernacular short fiction, legends, plays, sutras, and stele inscriptions at temples where she is worshipped. The full-length novel The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons narrates Chen Jinggu’s lifelong struggle with and eventual triumph over her spirit double and rival, the White Snake demon. Among accounts of goddesses in late imperial China, this work is unique in its focus on the physical aspects of womanhood, especially the dangers of childbirth, and in its dramatization of the contradictory nature of Chinese divinities. This unabridged, annotated translation provides insights into late imperial Chinese religion, the lives of women, and the structure of families and local society.

This book is a detailed examination of a Chinese women's cult that confronts the dangers of pregnancy, childbirth, and childhood diseases.

"No-No Boy has the honor of being among the first of what has become an entire literary canon of Asian American literature,” writes novelist Ruth Ozeki in her new foreword. First published in 1957, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them. It was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novel’s importance and popularized it as one of literature’s most powerful testaments to the Asian American experience. No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life “no-no boys.” Yamada answered “no” twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle. As Ozeki writes, Ichiro’s “obsessive, tormented” voice subverts Japanese postwar “model-minority” stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one man’s “threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world.” The first edition of No-No Boy since 1979 presents this important work to new generations of readers.

Deep in the heart of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula lies Temple Grove, one of the last stands of ancient Douglas fir not protected from logging. Bill Newton, a gyppo logger desperate for work and a place to hide, has come to Temple Grove for the money to be made from the timber. There to stop him is Paul, a young Makah environmentalist who will break the law to save the trees. A dangerous chase into the wilds of Olympic National Park ensues, revealing a long-hidden secret that inextricably links the two men. Temple Grove is a gripping tale of suspense and a multilayered novel of place that captures in taut, luminous prose the traditions that tie people to a powerful landscape and the conflicts that run deep among them. Reading guide: http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/books/TEMPLE_GROVE_reading_guide.pdf

Yokohama, California, originally released in 1949, is the first published collection of short stories by a Japanese American. Set in a fictional community, these linked stories are alive with the people, gossip, humor, and legends of Japanese America in the 1930s and 1940s. Replaces ISBN 9780295961675

An apprentice sushi chef and a mysterious blue-eyed woman share a bottle of wine inside a climate-controlled otter tank. The Great Wall of China grumbles as workers forego construction to watch an imperial game of baseball. A young woman tries to imagine a future unsullied by her family’s history of untimely death. First issued in 1991, Pangs of Love introduced David Wong Louie’s bold storytelling. The son of Chinese immigrants, he centered his stories around characters who are in conflict with their place in the world, disconnected from both American society and their own families. The depth of his portrayals renders their experiences of love, envy, loneliness, loss, and duty universal—informed by their heritage yet not confined by it. These twelve short stories and one essay swerve from the absurd to longing for love, understanding, or simply a morsel of food. Pangs of Love and Other Writings makes Louie’s debut book available again, along with an additional short story and an extraordinary autobiographical essay, “Eat, Memory,” in which he reflects on life without food after throat cancer took away his ability to swallow. Pulitzer Prize–winner Viet Thanh Nguyen contributes a foreword elucidating Louie’s role in shaping contemporary Asian American literature, while an afterword by literary scholar King-Kok Cheung retraces the three phases of Louie’s career.